Word: bergmanic
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...film is plainly a tribute to Igmar Bergman, the master at expressing intense emotion and psychological drama on film. Allen emulates Bergman as a student would imitate the master of his craft. The effort, though somewhat over-wrought, like that of a too-careful student, succeeds. A talented cast, well-directed, saves the heavy screenplay from sinking into murky melodrama. Mary Beth Hurt, as the youngest daughter, the one with "all the anguish of an artistic personality without any of the talent," is especially good in her film debut. And Geraldine Page evokes the neurotic woman "too perfect to live...
...even welcome) a light, superficial portrait of Allen that amuses if not informs, go see it. Besides, the six short comic films that accompany the half-hour-long portrait of Allen are quite good, ranging from the couple-of-chuckles Betty Boop cartoon to the brilliant parodies of Bergman and Star Wars...
...women are mother and daughter, and their combat, on which Director Ingmar Bergman casts a dour and perhaps by now somewhat weary Northern eye, is all the more intense and enduring because it is grounded in love. Charlotte, the mother (formidably played by Ingrid Bergman-no relation to Ingmar-in her first Swedish language film in decades), is a concert pianist, acclaimed and prosperous, sailing grandly into late middle age. Eva, the daughter (Liv Ullmann in granny glasses, with a few lines of graceful weathering allowed to be visible on her ineffable forehead), is a church organist, the wife...
...much else seems right. Quite unnecessarily, Director Bergman has burdened Eva with a dead four-year-old son to mourn and a hideously crippled younger sister whose affliction in some vague way appears to be Charlotte's fault It is hard not to feel that these characters were included to make points already well established by the interaction of the two main figures. Eva's husband, who has little to do but smoke his pipe and look wise, is another minor irritation. The result is something close to triteness...
...mellifluous and easy and that the exquisite photography of interior scenes framed and lit like Vermeer's paintings shows little more than professionalism. The result, though the film is by no means unsuccessful as a whole, is that the actors tremble more than the audience. Passionate gloom haunted Bergman's earlier works, but professional gloom is what is visible in Autumn Sonata...